With progress in the miniaturization technology, commercialization of ultrafine semiconductor devices having a gate length of several nanometers is now in sight.
On the other hand, with such ultrafine semiconductor devices, production cost is increasing sharply, and tremendous difficulties are expected with regard to further miniaturization thereof, not only from the viewpoint of production technology but also from the viewpoint of production cost.
Meanwhile, it is known conventionally, in MIM (metal-insulator-metal) capacitors, especially an MOM (metal-oxide-metal) capacitor that uses an oxide film for the capacitor insulation film, that the capacitor insulation film shows hysteresis even when the capacitor insulation film is formed of a non-ferroelectric substance, such as a NiO film, a Fe2O3 film or a CuO film, when a voltage exceeding a certain forming voltage is applied. Thus, investigations are in progress for constructing ultra minute memories and switches by using the hysteresis characteristic thus discovered.